The VFS visit to DDB has got to be one of my main highlights from term three. Located just a fifteen minute walk away from the Digital Design campus, DDB stands as a world-class marketing agency with potential work opportunities for both motion and interactive designers! If that’s not enough to get you excited, here is a list of 10 other things to love about DDB!

1. Wide reach
DDB engages in integrated digital marketing and strategy. This improves their ability to reach large audiences across various platforms, enabling increased user engagement!
2. Results
Similar to VFS, results matter to DDB. They are keen on ensuring the best results for each of their clients, and most recently began sharing video documentation of their process and outcome for various client projects!
3. Variety
DDB has about 65 people doing much of the work for a given project, with 20-30 different clients at any given time. That’s a large portfolio.
4. Creativity
With an orientation towards storytelling and emotion, DDB campaigns are innovative and impactful, finding new ways to appeal to their audiences.
5. Research
A large part of the company’s success comes from their focus on strategy and research. They focus and go deep. This knowledge and understanding of their audience prior to creation ensures the right messaging and marketing solution for each client.
6. Long standing history
DDB was founded in 1986. Nevertheless, their presence in the marketing world dates way before that! Do you remember the iconic Volkswagen commercial, “Think Small”? That was DDB.
7. Worldwide Offices
With over 200 offices in 95 countries, breadth of experience is not something that is lacking for DDB.
8. Fantastic company culture
Teams in the Vancouver office are organized in pods. This allows for ease of connectivity and communication! Did I also mention that they have hot dog days?
9. Collaboration
As with all art creation, collaboration is key at DDB, and they do so across fields.
10. Use of atomic design
With regard to their Interactive department, DDB makes use of the atomic approach to design, which ensures consistent, high quality UI, as well as efficient workflow!

As part of an Industry IQ lesson, our DD38 class recently had the opportunity to visit the office of a world–renowned social media platform, Hootsuite. We have heard so many cool things about Hootsuite, and last Wednesday, we finally had the chance to meet them.

Upon arrival, Husna Shalkh from the HR team welcomed and walked us to the greeting area where the space is spiced up with a mural painting of a giant owl. From the moment we walked in, we saw murals everywhere; some of them were even created by their talented employees. During the tour, we luckily stumbled onto their Show and Tell session held on every Wednesday where staff from the UI, Product, and Development team gather together to share and discuss ideas and project updates. Like this session, they mentioned that Hootsuite likes to keep thing open to encourage free communication between employees. As we were walking, we could barely find a wall or boundary that separated each team. Each employee is mobile on a laptop, so that they don’t have to be confined to one particular working spot. You may catch them taking a break in the “Cabin” fitted with cots, or working while eating in a common area on rows of picnic tables, or just like us, found one team having meeting in a tent – literally, a real tent.

During the second half of the tour, we were directed into a meeting room where we met Jon Maltby, Senior Creative Director, and Mark Stokoe, Art Director of Hootsuite for a Q&A session. They started off introducing themselves and talking a bit about their careers, and explaining their roles at Hootsuite. Both of them came to Hootsuite for more opportunities and a greater sense of ownership compared with their past experiences working in agencies. Jon and Mark found that working for Hootsuite has enabled more self-satisfaction in the way that they feel ownership of what they are doing and being part of the environment. They create their own briefs by really knowing the company well and thinking about the long term big picture. Later Jon shared with us one of their company values as knowledge sharing; they encourage employees to discover new sets of skills and to strengthen their roles. They also hold Lightning Talks, a series of 5 minute presentations from employees to express their interests or journeys, which promote engagement and friendship outside of the normal work routine. Finally, the Q&A session finished by Mark explaining their UX/UI design process, which often involves collaborations with the Product and Marketing team. The team tests everything when it comes to UX/UI design. They often utilize heat maps to conduct user testing on design variations and they also substantially rely on Sketch to prototype.

The time spent at Hootsuite was fast but it was an exceptional opportunity for the class to experience how the work life in such a big tech company can look like. The tour was definitely informative and inspiring. We had a great insight into the company, learnt something related to what we are learning at VFS, and most importantly, left us with a motivation to keep challenging ourselves and with a more clear vision for our future careers.

Lastly, a big thank you to Louise Lee for organizing this tour, and Stephanie Wu and Jamie Moon for accompanying us. And, thanks Hootsuite again for having us.

We arrived at Giant Ant around 2pm on a sunny Friday afternoon. The studio was tucked away into Chinatown, just off Keefer Street. We waited outside for one of the studio heads to be ready for our visit. From the outside, the studio’s open plan and simple design gave it a welcoming and approachable feel.

Jay Grandin, one of the founders of the studio, invited us inside to begin the visit. We were led to a meeting room where we all gathered around a long table with a screen to see a demonstration of all of the work the studio was involved in.

We began our visit by watching a demo reel of Giant Ant’s work from 2015. This was a great way to begin as Giant Ant is known as one of the best in Vancouver so it was exciting to see what they had made before. Their work not only impressed me but also intimidated me slightly. It showed their quality of work and it was absolutely incredible. I aim to be able to produce their standard as soon as I can.

Jay then proceeded to go through later projects that Giant Ant was involved in, as their reel was from 2015. These included a series of projects that they had been doing with a Florida-based sunglasses company that was focused on the conservation of our waterways. All of the artwork, direction and design were mind blowing in these 3 projects. Every follow up to each project improved in so many ways, as well as trying new techniques and styles to evolve their way of approaching things.

While Jay brought us through all of Giant Ant’s work, he was also answering any questions we had about the studio or about the life of a designer. He brought us through how he and his wife created the studio; he started off life designing furniture. It was interesting to see how far he had come from that. He talked about how he and his wife had to make sacrifices when running the studio. A couple of times they were forced to just pay their staff and leave nothing for themselves. This told me they were both really passionate about what they do and that it paid off for them in the long run.

The studio was beautiful, the work they produced matched and the whole work environment seemed more like a family than an actual studio. The thing that resonated with me the most though was when Jay was explaining how they chose what work the studio would take and what they would leave. He said “We ask ourselves: would our moms be proud? Would we use this product? Is it a financial opportunity? And can we be creative with it?” I think this sums up the perfect way to approach work as a designer, both ethically and logically.

I took a lot away from visiting Giant Ant. It has given me a standard to aim for when doing my graduate project, but also has given me a good message to live by when choosing work later on in life.

On May 26th & 27th, we (Liz, Marly and Tais) had the opportunity to attend Blend Fest, a motion design festival, as volunteers. Set in Vancouver, Blend has become one of the most anticipated events around the world for people in the motion design community. Due to the success in their first year, the event organizers decided to do it again but this time bigger and better, and for sure they did!

One of the things that makes Blend Fest stand out is their vision, so at the beginning, they showed a motion piece about their manifesto that says the following:

This celebration is carefully curated and created with much love by a small group of people: JorgeCanedo, TeresaToews, Claudio Salas & Sander van Dijk. They wanted to create a place for their motion, design & animation family to call home; to make a festival for the community, by the community. Always trying to keep it small and hoping to create a festival that each one of them would love to attend.

Attending this event was such an amazing opportunity because we got to meet designers from all around the world that only flew out for this. Since designers who we know and admire their work until junior designers who are growing in their skills, both shared their knowledge, talked about their currents projects and shared a few minutes of their time to have a chat and made unique every second of this. Also we had the opportunity to network with people that may possibly be our employers or collaborators one day.

On May 3rd, we had the pleasure of hosting the annual Salazar Awards at the VFS Digital Design campus. The Salazar Awards, presented by the GDC (Society of Graphic Design of Canada), awards prizes to talented and inspiring students currently enrolled in design programs in British Columbia. There are four award categories: Print Design, Interactive Design, Brand Identity, and Video and Motion, and there were over 150 submissions this year. A judging committee of top professionals of the GDC/BC reviewed the student work based on the strategy and rationale of the piece, as well as the level of visual execution.

GDC/BC President Johnathon Vaughn Strebly opened the night with an inspiring and thoughtful speech about the importance of design, and the importance of inspiring and recognizing the talented design students across the province. Then came the awards! First, all of the nominees for each of the four awards were recognized – amongst them were VFS Digital Design graduates Dylan Endicott, Kelly Kurtz, Melissa Choi, Nikki Yujin Ji, Ziwei Wang, and Brandon Kim. Now, time for the winners…

Out of the four awards, VFS Digital Design graduates took home two of them! Mihaela Kandeva won the Best Interactive Award with her graduate project Iona – an augmented reality app that teaches chemistry to school students through a fun and engaging experience. Lawrence Teng took the win for the Best Video + Motion Award with his graduate project “Mr. Owen Goes to Mars” – a 90-second animated motion graphic trailer for a fictitious film set in the 1800s told through animated letters and numbers.

The formal part of the evening concluded with a special presentation by guest speaker, Ale Paul. Ale Paul is one of the founders of Sudtipos, a project that has helped place Argentina firmly on the global map of Graphic Design. Ale’s career as an art director landed him in some of Argentina’s most prestigious studios and, with the founding of Sudtipos, he has shifted his efforts to typeface design, creating fonts and lettering for several agencies, medias and magazines along with commercial faces. He has received four Certificates of Excellence from the Type Directors Club NY, eight from the CommArts Type Competition, and several awards at the Tipos Latinos Biennial of Typography. His work has been featured in publications around the globe, he has been designated ATypi’s country delegate, and is a member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale – the first one for Argentina.

The event ended with a lots of bubbling and engaging conversation in the hallway where audience members, presenters, students, and industry folk all had the opportunity to mingle. We’re grateful to the GDC for giving Vancouver Film School the opportunity to host this year’s Salazar Awards, and congratulations to both the GDC for a great event, and to all of the nominees and winners!

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